To an approximate scale of 1:2½

In S.to Adriano (‘In Sant’Adriano’); Zoccolo [in graphite] (‘Plinth’); 20 [in graphite]

• 1625/35
  Date range: 1625/35

Pen and ink and dark brown wash in two tones over graphite

Seventeenth-Century Hand 1 (Codex Ursinianus Copyist)

The left-hand half of the pairing represents one of two bases of different design artificially joined together, and it is a seventeenth-century addition to the codex. The base, as the caption indicates, was seen in the late third-century Curia Julia, or Senate House, which was converted in the seventh century into the church of Sant’Adriano (Wegner 1966). It is very similar to a mid- sixteenth-century drawing in Berlin showing the entire base, which was probably closely related to the now-lost prototype for the Coner image (Campbell 2004). Later sixteenth-century drawings probably of the same base include one once attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and another, carefully measured and dating from c.1560/65, by Giovannantonio Dosio (Schreiter 2003, pp. 50–51). A note on the Dosio drawing states that the base had been in the house of Pietro Paulo Attavanti before being acquired by the archbishop of Florence, whom Ashby identified as Alessandro Ottaviano de’Medici 1535–1605), the eventual Pope Leo XI. Both these later drawings, however, differ from the Coner depiction and its Berlin equivalent in showing a pair of astragals, rather than just one, above the scotia, and yet another astragal above the lower torus, but this could simply be due to their greater precision, since similar shortcomings are seen in the Coner representation of the base to the right.

This composite image, in its format, is like others on the next two pages (Fols 77r and 78r), dating from the sixteenth rather than the seventeenth century, that similarly join drawings of two different bases at a central axis. It may have been conceived as a counterpart to these other drawings, rather than as a copy of an earlier depiction of the same format. Why these two particular bases were put together is unclear since there is little correspondence between them, unlike the pair seen on the following page (Fol. 77r/Ashby 131). The word zoccolo (‘plinth’) written in graphite on the drawing’s left seems unnecessary on its own, and it would be better suited to accompanying the drawing on the right and completing the list of mouldings seen there. The number ‘20’ written in graphite refers to the seventeenth-century campaign to add additional drawings to the codex.

This side of the sheet was blank in the original Codex Coner compilation, and its damage and the presence of glue on it suggest that, after the original compilation was dismantled, the sheet was originally laid down before being remounted into a window.

RELATED DRAWINGS: [Anon.] Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, inv. OZ 114, fol. 4

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon. (formerly attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola)] Florence, GDSU, 1813 Ar (Bartoli 1914–22, 6. p. 113); [Giovannantonio Dosio] Florence, GDSU, 2010 A (Bartoli 1914–22, 6. p. 146)

Ashby 1904, pp. 64–65
Campbell 2004, 2, pp. 636–37
Census, ID 45743

Drawing

Digitisation of the Codex Coner has been made possible through the generosity of the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, Berlin.

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